Abstract

The use of gender-fair language is an important measure to boost
gender equality. However, there is wide-spread scepticism as to the usefulness of
avoiding male bias in language, even in gendered languages. For instance, in
German all nouns carry grammatical gender, and role names are considered generic,
even when their gender is masculine. We used a sentence-picture matching task to
test whether male references in language induce gendered representations. After
presenting a sentence with a role name, a picture of a person was shown. In 48
trials, the factors gender of the role name (masculine vs. feminine) and sex of
the person in the picture (woman vs. man) were crossed. The results of 40
participants showed that women after masculine referents were more readily
accepted than men after feminine referents, but reaction times increased. Thus,
readers interpret some masculine forms as generic, but only with considerable
cognitive effort.